Essential reading

Possibly the most fully engaged writer of our age

Trenchant, deeply informed and informative...an important volume

A stylist with the trick of defamiliarising the familiar, he is also a keen student of the public realm...we should prize him - for his engagement as well as his gifts

Entertaining, witty, thoughtful and sometimes discomforting

Rashid assembles a broad network of sources on all sides of the debate and is probing in his treatment of all the main actors ... a powerful and pacey primer

Her excavation of the histories of the ordinary people who lived in each place is fascinating and she vividly brings the past to life via domestic minutiae

Subtle, delicate and slightly dotty. Tindall is attracted to the idea of lives overlooked and deeds mislaid…this intriguing, imaginative book is very much my cup of tea

Three houses - a Cotswold vicarage, a one-time girls' boarding school and a Jacobean house. Gillian Tindall explores the lives of those who once lived there, and through her research she is able to reveal four centuries of English history. Tindall has sensitivity to the past like few others; her approach to history is delicate, detailed and revealing. For my money, this is one of the history leads of the year

The big surprise of this book is the fascinating thread of memories which holds the narrative together

She is a writer with a quiet genius for local history and empathetic understanding of ordinary people

A deeply rewarding read

Both warm and poignant and a joy to read

It’s a worthy project, but in the most fascinating way

Tindall transforms bricks and mortar into fascinating social history

Wonderful, passionate, dangerous, fascinating stuff. I couldn't put it down

Leanda de Lisle has the gift of reminding us that history is the story of real people; real men, real women, full of rage and ambitionand lust and hope and love. The Tudors are already our most vivid dynasty, by quite a long chalk, but these pages render them more vivid still. This was an age when the game was worth the candle, when a chance remark could result in a crown or the axe. Wonderful, passionate, dangerous, fascinating stuff. I couldn't put it down

This fresh take on the Tudor dynasty is history at its best... an engaging and well-sourced account, sprinkled with provocative anecdotes that will appeal to both scholars and general readers... This compelling tale is driven by three-dimensional people and relationships, and de Lisle does a fantastic job of making them feel lived and dramatic

Reveals an entirely new perspective on one of England's most fascinating dynasties

A very lucid, entertaining and excellent read

A thrilling, intelligent and fresh royal history that sweeps from the family’s unlikely beginnings in the 1420s to their apotheosis under Elizabeth

The compelling story of the Tudors is vividly brought to life in de Lisle's narrative

This should now be the go-to book for those looking for a broad understanding of the Tudors

De Lisle's energy and stamina in this vast operation are truly impressive. What is more, she tells an often thrilling story with great dexterity... Altogether, this remarkable achievement puts de Lisle firmly in the front rank of popular historians of the period

Unlike many books that claim to tell the story of the Tudors, but focus mainly on four characters (namely Henry VIII and his three children who all ruled England after him), this excellent book includes so many members of the Tudor family who may not always be forgotten, but are often sidelined